Starting Strength

stronger.
    If the bar is placed high on the back – on top of the traps, where most people start off carrying it because it’s an easier and more obvious place for a bar – the back angle must accommodate the higher position by becoming more vertical to keep the bar over the mid-foot. If the back angle is more vertical, the knee angle must become more closed because the knees get shoved forward when the hips open up ( Figure 2-8 again). In other words, the higher bar position makes the back squat more like the front squat, and we don’t want to front-squat for general strength development because it doesn’t effectively train the source of whole-body power: the posterior chain.
    The high-bar, or “Olympic,” squat has been the preferred form of the exercise for Olympic weightlifters for decades. This seems to be largely a matter of tradition and inertia, since there are compelling reasons for weightlifters to use the low-bar position, too. Since the squat is not a contested lift in weightlifting, and since Olympic lifters front-squat to directly reinforce the squat clean anyway, the reasons for weightlifters to use the low-bar squat in training must involve other considerations. The squat makes you strong, and weightlifting is a strength sport; even if it is terribly dependent on technique, the winner is still the one who lifts the most weight. The high-bar position may be harder, but the low-bar position uses more muscle, allows more weight to be lifted, and consequently prepares the lifter for heavier weights.
    If an argument on the basis of specificity is to be made, the low-bar squat is also more applicable to the mechanics of Olympic weightlifting than the high-bar squat. The low-bar position, with the weight sitting just below the spine of the scapula, much more closely approximates the mechanics of the position in which the bar is pulled off of the floor. As the discussions of pulling mechanics in the Deadlift and Power Clean chapters illustrate, the shoulder blades are directly above the bar when it leaves the floor in a heavy pull, and they stay there until the bar rises well above the knees. This is true for both the clean and the snatch, with the snatch being done from a position even less similar to the Olympic squat than the clean is. Low-bar squats done with this similar, relatively horizontal back angle train the movement pattern more directly than does the high-bar version, which places the back at a higher angle due to the higher position of the bar on the traps. And they do it through a nice, long range of motion due to the fact that the squat goes to a deeper hip position than the start position of either the snatch or the clean and jerk.
    If the back angle is kept constant for both the low-bar squat and the pull from the floor (which it must be, see back angle discussion in the deadlift chapter ), they are very similar movements – more similar than a high-bar squat and a pull of any type. If an argument is to be made for squatting with a form specific to the motor pathway requirements of the sport, the low-bar position would be that form. And if an argument is made that the squat need not be similar, the low-bar squat still makes more sense because it can be done with heavier weights.
    Squat Depth – Safety and Importance
     
    The full squat is the preferred lower-body exercise for safety as well as for athletic strength. The squat, when performed correctly , not only is the safest leg exercise for the knees, but also produces more stable knees than any other leg exercise does. Correctly is deep, with hips dropping below level with the top of the patellas (see Figure 2-1 ). Correctly is therefore full range of motion.
     
    Any squat that is not deep is a partial squat, and partial squats stress the knees and the quadriceps without stressing the glutes, the adductors, or the hamstrings. In full squats, the hamstrings, groin muscles, and glutes come under load as the knees are shoved out, the hips are pushed back, and the back assumes the correct angle on the way down for hip drive to occur on the way up. At the very bottom of the squat, the hips are in flexion and the pelvis tilts forward with the torso. In this deep squat position ( Figure 2-9 ), several muscle groups reach a full stretch: the adductors (attached between the medial pelvis and various points on the medial femur), and the glutes and external rotators (attached between the pelvis and the lateral femur). Here, the function